


Scratched

by SullivanGirl1



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Inspector Sullivan, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24113869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SullivanGirl1/pseuds/SullivanGirl1
Summary: Inspector Sullivan has to pursue a suspect through a briar patch and,  while he gets his man, is badly scratched and torn as a result.When Father Brown comes calling to the station after the arrest, and sees the condition Kembleford’s inspector is in, it’s just...easier to go along when the priest insists on helping.
Relationships: Father Brown & Inspector Sullivan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Scratched

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever Father Brown fan fic.

The ground at the rear of Willard Blakely’s cottage is almost instantly a steep climb, but it gives Sullivan little trouble; he’s always kept fit, and his quarry is not a young man.

Still, desperation not to be caught, and to avoid the noose, gives him a speed that carries him quickly over the top of the hill; it’s less than a minute before the inspector reaches the summit, but by then Blakely seems to have disappeared.

Breathing hard, Sullivan pauses to try and spot his fleeing suspect - no, murderer. Despite what Father Brown insists, despite his meddling and the delay it’s caused, he’s sure that Blakely is their guilty party.

Nothing else makes sense or fits the evidence they’ve so carefully gathered, and, if Willard Blakely is in fact innocent, it begs the question why he ran and is now hiding somewhere below.

Unless Father Brown has been praying and a flock of angels have descended to bear Blakely away from the justice awaiting him, the only possible place he could be is in the briar field.

Sullivan starts more carefully downward, the descent just as steep as the climb, and wonders how on earth Blakely managed to navigate the thicket of curved thorns stretched out like a wall before him.

It doesn’t matter; clearly he has done so, somehow, and that leaves Sullivan but one option: to follow suit.

He’s barely touched the first tangled mass when something sharp pricks his palm; he pulls back, wincing, and glares at a thin line of blood that tricks down his wrist and stains his sleeve.

It’s some small comfort that if he ends up stabbed and bloody, so will Blakely; it might make the other man surrender, unwilling to drag himself through some twenty or thirty yards of sharp thorns.

Either way, Sullivan means to have him.

He pushes on, gritting his teeth as his clothing is hooked and snagged; his blazer provides some protection, but not enough.

Thorns tear through his shirt, catch his hands, and one especially wicked barb tears a blazingly painful line open across his cheek.

By the time he’s halfway through, Sullivan is doubting the man came this way; he can’t see him, and it seems impossible Blakely could have any better luck pushing through this wicked mess than Sullivan, except…

It hits him then that Blakely has two distinct advantages: one is that he’s smaller than Sullivan by a good foot and a half and of slighter build; Sullivan could see him ducking down and scraping under, or even through the areas where he’s become…

Impaled seems a dramatic way of putting it, but accurate nonetheless.

And number two: this natural minefield is part of Blakely’s property. It’s more than likely he’s foraged here, or at least knows a good way to get through it without ending up torn open.

It only renews Sullivan’s determination to break through; if he’s right then Blakely will soon emerge, and Sullivan is not going to lose him.

He lets the briar patch have his blazer, shrugging out of it even though he knows he’ll pay for that freedom.

And he does; every foot of progress he gains, unimpeded by the thorns, subjects him to a bloody torment. They catch at him with an almost sentient viciousness as if they know he is too determined to be held or made to turn back.

And then, with only a handful of yards to go, Blakely must realise the same. He curses at Sullivan and wriggles out from a thick section of briars and staggers to his feet.

He’s so near, and Sullivan ignores the pain and throws himself forwards, knowing he’ll need assistance when this is over, and then he’s free and Blakely yells angrily as Sullivan grabs hold of him and pushes him down onto the ground.

“Willard Blakely,” he pants. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Everard Blakely. You’re not obliged to say anything….”

++

He is aware how he must look; Goodfellow had barely laid eyes on him before he turned to glare at Blakely hard enough to have the smaller man cowering back against Sullivan.

Once the sergeant was reassured that Blakely was not, directly, responsible for his physical condition, Sullivan saw to his transfer into custody, and interviewed him (there was no confession, but then he didn’t expect one; Blakely spent most of the duration calling Sullivan every foul name he seemed to know) before personally locking him in one of the cells.

And now…

He winces as he sits back gingerly, body aching and not just from being sliced and poked and stabbed in his pursuit of a killer.

There’s a bottle of whiskey in his drawer; he never indulges on duty, and he still is on duty for another one hour and forty minutes but once he is on his own time, he plans to allow himself a small glass before going home and cleaning himself up and going to bed.

He knows Goodfellow would prefer him to see the police surgeon, but what can the man do for him? He’s not what he would class as hurt and he’s never been one for allowing himself to be mollycoddled.

No. He can take care of this in his own time and way, and can wait until then.

It’s at that point that he sees a familiar shape through the glass partition between his office and the front desk, and groans as someone knocks on his door.

He could sit here and say nothing, except he knows the priest would come in anyway.

He could be as honest as he feels and tell Father Brown he is not in the mood for him to come in and argue the innocence of a man who has a mass of evidence stacked against him and subjected him, Sullivan, to a tortuous pursuit.

But he’s no longer prepared to let Brown antagonise him into rudeness, sure that it simply confirms the man’s view of him as a stubborn, flat footed clod despite what the Brown said the first time he was in this office.

There is only one other option, and so he sighs and calls out for the priest to come in.

++

It’s a surprise...no, more of a shock to hear the priest admit he may perhaps have misjudged Willard Blakely.

That doesn’t come immediately; first, he can see the disbelief on Brown’s face no doubt at the less than pristine condition he’s in.

Well, the good father can judge as he wishes; he was hardly in a position to change before delivering his prisoner to custody and arranging his interview, and what point would there have been to do that, and dirty another suit on the muck and blood he’s covered with?

“Have you been seen by the police surgeon?”

Sullivan realises he’d gotten somewhat lost just sitting there, find it a little harder to concentrate as each and every scrape and scratch is now throbbing hotly across his body.

“Hardly necessary,” Sullivan says. 

Brown stares at him. “I think perhaps you should be examined. The last thing you need is any of those scratches becoming infected, and briar wounds can be quite nasty.”

“I’ll clean them out when I’m home,” he says, but he can already see that determined set to the priest’s stance.

“Or you could come back to the presbytery with me and we can take care of them there.”

Sullivan glares. Oh, and be subject to the no less sharp barbs of Mrs McCarthy and, if he’s around, Carter? He’d rather clamber through the briar patch again.

Brown almost seems ready to read his mind. “Inspector, you’ll find it impossible to take care of all those wounds yourself.”

He wants to roll his eyes. “They’re hardly wounds.”

But he can already see the Father means to have his way on this, and while it’s tempting to be the obdurate man Brown has him labelled as, he’s also not so petty as to suffer for the sake of it.

He almost reconsiders when Brown insists on having one of the sergeants drive them to the church.

++

When it became clear some degree of undressing would be required, Sullivan was glad that Brown persuaded Mrs McCarthy to remove her presence from the drawing room.

The woman had set her feet as if intending to stay, claiming that lending Christian assistance meant it would not be a sin if she saw beneath the inspector’s shirt and vest.

Sullivan felt a flush rise over his skin, that took some moments to abate even after Father Brown had shut the door behind her.

He was in the priest’s debt, already

Glancing at the drawn curtains, wondering if the town beyond was already aware of how ridiculous his _injuries_ were, and that he was now subject to the caregiving of the priest he was so often at loggerheads with, Sullivan tries to relax.

He’s no doubt that what comes next will hurt, and watches as the priest takes a large first aid box out of the cupboard.

“I imagine Willard was surprised you gave chase,” he says, as he puts it down on the table near where Sullivan is sitting, and begins unpacking the contents.

“Perhaps.” 

“That field of briars would have put a good many people off.”

“Maybe.”

He isn’t sure if Brown is simply trying to prevent an awkward atmosphere or if he’s leading up to one of his sneaky attempts to obtain information.

The case is done. Willard hasn’t confessed, but Sullivan is satisfied of his guilt, sure of the case he’s built and certain that a jury will come to the same conclusions.

He was a fool to think this was about assisting him, but now his shirt and vest and trousers and folded up on a chair across the room, and Brown has a bottle of antiseptic and some gauze in his hands.

His face flushes once more but this time with temper at his own stupidity and that Brown has, yes, taken advantage of him under the current circumstances.

Sullivan stands up, ready to thank the father for his ‘kindness’ and then pick up his clothes and then go, but either he’s lost more blood than he thought, or his adventure is telling on him, or he simply stood up too fast because he sways and then Brown is pushing him back down onto the couch.

“Maybe we should do this with you sitting down.”

++

Sullivan spends the first several minutes tense enough that Brown stops ministering to his wounds, and apologises, genuinely, for hurting him.

He is hurting him, the antiseptic burning as it seeps into each slash and graze, but it seems unfair and beneath him to leave the priest thinking that’s the only reason why he’s coiled tighter than a spring.

Especially since he’s been lying face down on the couch for nearly a quarter of an hour and Brown hasn’t asked him a single question about the case.

“It’s not that,” Sullivan says, quietly. “I…. I owe you an apology, Father.”

“Oh?”

Brown gently resumes dabbing the lotion and Sullivan squeezes his eyes shut as he finds an especially painful spot.

“I believed…. I thought your intention in offering your help was just an excuse to quiz me on the case.”

Brown sighed. “Ah. I think, Inspector, I can hardly criticise you for being suspicious. We often seem to be on the opposite side even when we are actuallly on the same one.”

Sullivan wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but their aims were the same. It was just that he, being an officer of the law, didn’t appreciate, or have time for, the meddling of a member of the public.

And while that meddling often resulted in the priest establishing the who, why and how of whatever investigation he chose to dabble in, Sullivan has always felt it was only a matter of time before his (he would never admit this out loud) sound logic failed him.

It had today, and delayed him enough that he had been forced to pursue his suspect through a briar field.

Perhaps that was it; perhaps the priest was feeling guilty.

If so, there was no need. Giving chase had been Sullivan’s own choice; he could have retreated and called for help from the house but that course of action would have risked him losing the guilty man.

No; the only person truly to blame was Blakely.

“I think you have a thorn in here,” Brown says.

He’s dabbing carefully at the same spot, and the pressure has a sharp quality to it, suggesting he’s correct.

Sullivan watches as he gets up to retrieve a pair of tweezers from the first aid kid.

“I’m afraid this will probably hurt, Inspector.”

Sullivan nods. He tries to relax as Brown sits down on the edge of the couch and carefully rests the tweezer tips just against the wound.

‘Father,” he says.

Brown pauses. “Inspector?”

“Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Probably most of what I write will be Sullivan whump (I love him so naturally I’m going to show this by copious amounts of hurt/comfort for him). If anybody has any h/c prompts, please let me know.


End file.
